over your head like a poisonous weed.”
Then she went back to ogling her beloved screens while, internally, I was leaping for joy. All I had to do was keep on keeping on and soon the Queen would grant me a wish, which would be for Jess to be made Cinderella, and we’d live happily ever after!
“Seems your attempts to do me in have failed, huh?” I whispered to Tinker Bell, who was snoozing on her purple satin cushion.
She popped open a tiny, evil black eye. Grrrrr, she growled, so softly, it sounded more like a snore.
Little did I know that, within hours, this eight-pound fluff ball of evil would set in motion a series of events intended to trigger my demise. To paraphrase William Congreve, “Hell hath no fury like a bichon frise scorned.”
Eight
I was fast asleep when the iPhone the Queen gave me blared the strains of “Every Breath You Take,” the creepy Police song about stalking that Jess had set as my ringtone for Her Majesty.
“Zoe! Something’s wrong with Tinkers.” The Queen sounded panicked. “I’ve been buzzed.”
Strange but true: Tinker Bell had been taught to press her paw on a little brass button that activated a buzzer in the Queen’s bedroom. Frankly, I’d had my doubts that a dog with a brain the size of an overgrown peanut could be trained to use such a thing, but, apparently, overgrown-peanut dog brains are wildly underestimated.
Lowering her voice, the Queen explained, “I suspect she is suffering from an upset tummy. We were celebrating the latest quarterly profit statements this evening, and I’m afraid she overdid it with the foie gras and champagne.”
Probably really expensive champagne, too. Stifling a yawn, I said, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be right there.” And hung up to get dressed.
Jess rolled over. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish.” Pulling on a pair of shorts, my Bridgewater-Raritan High School hoodie, and flip-flops, I took the iPhone so the Queen wouldn’t wake Jess with another call but left the flashlight next to my bed, figuring Tink would require no more than a quick do-si-do around her favorite bush.
Had I any inkling that her plan would be to take off for the Haunted Forest as soon as her toes touched the artificially green grass of Fiddler’s Green and that she’d pursue an imaginary squirrel all the way to the fence and I’d be forced to follow her into the Forbidden Zone, where I’d be stuck in quicksand, relying on the assistance of some wise-cracking, rule-breaking, night-wandering prince, I might, indeed, have been more prepared.
But I wasn’t.
The following morning I awoke with sand under my nails, the prince’s shirt swatch in my hand, and the blurry feeling that my duty was to report the prince’s illegal activities—that is, if I were as loyal to the Fairyland family as Her Majesty believed me to be.
Except I couldn’t be loyal to the Fairyland family, because I’d promised the prince I wouldn’t tell, a vow I absolutely couldn’t break. It wasn’t just that he’d found Tinker Bell and saved my butt, but that he’d found a branch and saved my life.
“So let me get this straight,” Jess said as I opened the Queen’s morning newspapers and went directly to the entertainment section to start editing. “You were chasing Tinker Bell, and you found an old wall, and when you reached up to see what it was, you stepped into a sinkhole.”
“Quicksand, actually.” I pondered whether Her Majesty would be irritated by an ad for a movie about Snow White even though it hadn’t been produced by a Mouse studio. “And I more than stepped. I went in up to my thighs.” I cut it out just in case.
“That’s sooo scary. I probably would have screamed my head off.”
“And let the trolls find me in the Forbidden Zone with Tink lost? No way.”
Jess plunked her finger on a coupon for free kiddie bowling, a family-friendly alternative to visiting Fairyland that would send the Queen into fits. “You missed this.”
I uncapped my X-acto knife and proceeded to carve out the offending ad along with several advertisements for skee-ball arcades, movie theaters, and a local internet café. “Good catch.”
“No problem. Give me the inserts, and I’ll check the rest.”
It was the Sunday paper, so there were tons. I dumped them in the lap of her blue gingham Red Riding Hood dress, and she got down to work.
“Here’s what I want to know,” Jess said. “What was a prince doing after curfew in, of all places, the Forbidden Zone? I